


Those Painted Countries

by GCLane



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Bisexuality, Case Fic, F/M, Homosexuality, How about that, Just sexuality basically, Librarians, M/M, Maps, Mary is a whole complex person, Post-His Last Vow, Respectfully-depicted librarians, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-03
Updated: 2014-12-03
Packaged: 2018-02-28 01:24:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2713814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GCLane/pseuds/GCLane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five maps, stolen from an American university, turn up in a London rare book shop.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Those Painted Countries

**Author's Note:**

> Dear reader, I am normally not one for WIPs, but I've got to come down somewhere with this one. I'm currently trying to make it save the universe. The madness ends (begins?) here. Completely outlined, largely written, but no promises concerning the timing of updates. Regardless, I hope you enjoy.
> 
> Sincere thanks to professorfangirl for her comments on a previous draft of the first chapter. Her suggestions made a considerable difference and improvement. 
> 
> Title taken from Robert Herrick's "A Country Life: To His Brother, M. Tho. Herrick." The maps and supporting research materials depicted are real.

Sherlock’s been staring at the grating mass of color and conflict tacked to his sitting room wall for days. He’s wearing a pair of gray pajama bottoms and a Mercator-gridded sheet stripped from what used to be John’s bed. Sherlock is unshaven and unshowered, with intent eyes, an empty stomach, and a brain gone supernova.

He sets his jaw, draws a deep breath through his nose, begins again.

The Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire spread like liquid, viscous, centuries-slow, radiating from Istanbul was Constantinople now it’s Istanbul not Constantinople outward. _Even old New York was once New Amsterdam_ \- he doesn’t have time for teenage detritus, shoves the song in the first available filing cabinet, and keeps going. All of the maps he has been able to find are interested in the stages of empiric expansion - color-coded, consuming still-familiar place names. The map, extracted from a 1923 edition of the _Historical Atlas_ by William R. Shepherd, is purple, sick green, gummy pink. It is, according to more than one book dealer, basically worthless, from a collector’s perspective. “So why then,” he asks the underheated room, the cold hearth. A print of a digital version is tacked to the wall nonetheless. On its right is the -

_Why they changed it I can’t say -_

Irish Republic, seventeenth century, 500 pounds, beautiful. The original, returned to the American university to which it belongs, glows in warm yellows and pinks, liquid blues, brilliant after nearly four centuries. The place names are a mash of Gaelic and Latin - _Hibernia reglum vulgo Ireland_. The lion and the unicorn are fighting for the crown, upper left. The cartographer’s signature is lush and five miles tall according to the scale held aloft by a pair of cherubs. The cartographer was Dutch, beloved by Vermeer, possessor, like Sherlock Holmes, of his own Wikipedia page. He loses two hours to an edit war with something called Holmesian221B (repeated deletions of the words “considerable speculation concerning an undiagnosed Autism Spectrum Disorder” _with absolutely no citation appended_ ) until he finds himself on the wrong end of an IP block.

Mrs. Hudson brings tea and takes in the state of her walls. “I hope chemists are taught a recipe for dissolving wheatpaste.”

“It’s fine,” he says, absent.

The next time she speaks, the light has shifted and the teapot is cold. “No cases at all?”

”I am unable to dismiss two possibilities - one, Moriarty has either hired every criminal in London, or, two, scared all of them straight. Wait." He studies the ceiling for a moment. "Three - he’s killed them all.” He sighs, wishes for bodies.

“Oh, I don’t think he’s killed anyone, Sherlock,” Mrs. Hudson scolds. “I would have seen it on the news.”

“Are you certain about that?” She leans back with a pained look and a shake of her head.

To deflect, he points. “There's just this.”

She steps a little closer, leans, peers at the distorted scans of the five maps, clippings from local and national newspapers, a marked-up and highlighted partial copy of a 2005 New Yorker article, a Wikipedia entry on the history of cartography with a cleanup notice on it, and a five-week old article from the Guardian - _Mayfair Book Dealer Recovers Stolen Maps._

The third map was excised from a considerable volume, a thorough history of the Holy Roman Empire from the nineteenth century. Sherlock brushes off his lamentable undergraduate German, puts on a pair of clean trousers, squints in the morning sun, and spends time with an intact copy at the British Museum, Menuhin’s Bach sonatas and partitas on repeat in his left ear, aber nichts nichts nichts. Back in his pajamas then, the sheet. Back to the wall.

 _Poland, shewing the claims of Russia, Prussia, & Austria, until the late depredations, the extent of which cannot as yet be ascertained_ is a thrilling title, unsuited to the map itself, a two-tone tangle of geopolitical claims. “Depredation, noun - The action of making a prey of; plundering, pillaging, ravaging; also, plundered or pillaged condition,” Sherlock reads, the glowing rectangle of his phone the only light in his dark bedroom, seeking meaning. The map is American, the first of its kind, odd, a new world, old world object.

The final map is modern, 1970s goldenrod. It’s a CIA street map of Leningrad, covered in transliterated Russian place names. It’s large and ugly, not from a bound volume. It was slipped from a drawer in special collections four thousand miles away and secreted out. Somehow. For some reason.

“What’s important,” he breathes, standing on the sofa, face inches from Leningrad.

From his chair, weak sun lighting up his hair, John responds, “I have no idea.”

Sherlock turns, angles his head. “Yes, you do. You always know, even when you don’t know that you know.”

“Nope. No clue.”

Sherlock hops from the sofa. “Make a list,” he commands.

John considers for a moment, reaches for his mug. It’s sitting on top of a slim volume, relatively speaking, that promises the reader a concise version of European history, Middle Ages through the Cold War. “The locations. The publication dates of the maps. The points in history depicted. The cartographers. The materials used.” As John speaks, Sherlock abandons himself to the chair opposite, his, drawing the sheet tighter around him. “The method by which they were stolen. The location from which they were stolen. The order in which they were stolen. The false names used by the people who stole them. The librarians on the clock. The librarians off the clock. Possible motives. The relative monetary value of each map.” Sherlock’s gazing upward, at the oblong square made by the same bit of sun that’s making John glow. “Establishing that it’s all connected in the first place.”

“I’m certain that it’s all connected.”

John’s foot comes to rest on the seat of Sherlock’s chair, his toes brushing the side of Sherlock’s thigh. “How do we know?”

“They’re all from the same American university. They were all sent to the same rare book dealer, all with the same contact.”

“Do we suspect the book dealer?”

“The maps, taken together, are barely worth two thousand pounds, even in a strong market. No motive. No reason to sink her own career by contacting me.”

“So what was wrong with seller?”

“Mobile phone number. Cagey. Sent the maps via courier. The book dealer was immediately suspicious.” Sherlock wraps his hand around John’s instep and presses his thumb into the humid beige wool covering the arch of his foot. 

John hums, loses some of the rigidity in his spine. “Who was listed as the sender?”

“False name. Street address for the British Library. How did the courier fail to notice that?”

“Courier’s been paid off? Courier’s in on it?” John wiggles his foot free of Sherlock’s grip.

“No and no. The courier is an idiot, barely passed O-levels, business badly concealed front for dealing club drugs, currently obsessed with the affair he’s conducting with his,” Sherlock’s hands lift like someone’s working his strings, his fingers form quotes, “assistant.”

John’s over him, dropping his hands to the arms of the chair, boxing Sherlock in. Sherlock’s raised hands join, his fingers laced at the nape of John’s neck. “An affair with his assistant?”

His expression and manner are casual, but no one listening could miss the tremor in Sherlock’s voice when he replies, “Yes.”

“Cliché.” John’s kiss is soft and new, but certain.

The buzzer sounds, the downstairs door opens, and John calls, “Sherlock?”

Sherlock doesn’t respond. There are two sets of feet on the stairs. Short strides, both steady, but one taking the support of the wall.

Mary comes through the door first, a market bag with takeaway curry from the new shop down the road over her shoulder. John’s behind her, one hand hovering like she’s going to tumble backwards under the weight of her belly at any moment.

“Hello, Watsons,” Sherlock waves.

They’ve stopped in the doorway. The walls are crusted in an explosion of newspaper articles, photographs, closed-circuit camera stills, police reports, eyewitness testimony, phone transcripts, emails, and government documents. John slips from behind Mary, leans to his left, and confirms - the chaos trails into the kitchen, taped to the cabinets and down the hall to Sherlock’s bedroom. The bedroom door itself is closed and appears to be wheatpasted with stills from YouTube videos. Laptops scattered around the flat steadily update a series of Twitter hashtags, while others play Moriarty’s brief flash of a video on a loop.

There are fresh bullet holes. Everywhere.

“Jesus, Sherlock,” John marvels. Mary continues to the kitchen, eyeing the walls like they might attack.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” Sherlock pushes himself out of his chair, shedding the bedsheet with a flap as he stands.

“Not answering my texts for a week.” Mary’s clattering plates and silverware in the kitchen.John has crossed the room to stand in front of the fireplace, where he can see both of them. He makes an open assessment of Sherlock’s bare chest. “You’re thin. Thinner.”

“You’re staring. I’m busy. Case involving the theft of a number of rare maps.” Sherlock ties his dressing gown and points to the relevant information above the sofa. John glances back, but does not move. “I have a flight to Chicago in two days.”

He looks back at Sherlock, surprised, “Is the United States really going to let you in? Given, ah,”

“Are you referring to the tragic suicide of an emotionally distressed public figure that we arrived too late to prevent?” Sherlock raises an eyebrow, pops the final “T.” John doesn’t commit. “I booked a second ticket.”

“No.”

“We’ll be gone a week at absolute most.”

“Sherlock, really - Mary’s in her third trimester.”

“It’s her first baby and she’s in perfect health. Statistically speaking, it’s likely that she won’t deliver until after her due date.”

“Have you been reading pregnancy websites?”

“I’m pregnant, not deaf, thank you,” Mary’s in the doorway between the kitchen and the sitting room. She gestures behind her with a tilt of her head. “Lunch.”

“Apologies for that, Mary. Sherlock’s being an idiot.”

She shrugs. “Not really. There’d be no harm in going. I’m away end of next week, remember? Last girls’ weekend before I ruin my life? An adventure before we destroy yours?” She’s smiling at both of them, hands on her belly.

“It’s an early afternoon flight on Monday. The car will be around at nine.” Sherlock brushes past John, slapping him on the back as he goes. He drops a kiss on Mary’s cheek as he enters the kitchen. “Thanks for lunch, Mary.”

John’s in front of the fireplace still, watching Sherlock sniff the takeout containers one by one. “Really. Across the Atlantic because someone nicked some maps?”

“What else would you suggest I do, John?” He asks because he cannot decide. He asks because he genuinely wants to know.


End file.
